Coroners’ reports

After an inquest, a coroner can write a Prevention of Future Deaths report if they think more deaths could happen unless something changes. It goes to the organisations that could act, and they have 56 days to reply. Coroners’ reports from England and Wales are published on judiciary.uk, and we collect them from there.

The 56-day rule

An organisation that receives a report must reply to the coroner within 56 days, saying what it will do or why it will do nothing. We count the 56 days from the date on the report, because the date it was sent isn’t published. If the 56th day is a Saturday or Sunday, a reply on the Monday still counts as in time. Bank holidays aren’t taken into account.

We can only say what judiciary.uk has published

We only know about responses that judiciary.uk has published. A reply may have been sent and not yet published, so we never say that an organisation didn’t reply. Every status below describes what judiciary.uk shows.

What each status means

On the list, a report is “Deadline passed” when fewer responses are published than it was sent to. The count is of what judiciary.uk has published so far.

On a report’s own page each organisation it was sent to has its own line, with the same words for one organisation:

• Response published: judiciary.uk has published a response from this organisation.
• Not yet due, Deadline passed, Report put online after its 56 days and Dates unclear mean the same as above.
• No response published: the report has no date, so we can’t tell when a response is due, and judiciary.uk hasn’t published one.
• Response published, not yet matched: a response is published with the report, but we haven’t yet matched it to the organisation it’s from, so it may be this one’s.

Who a report was sent to

Each report names the organisations it was sent to, as the coroner wrote them. We match those names to the organisations we cover, by code, current name or former name. A close but uncertain match is checked by a person. Only matches made automatically with confidence, or confirmed by a person, link to an organisation. Others are shown as named in the report.

The explorer

The coroners’ reports explorer lists every report we hold. You can search it by words in the report or a response. Under More filters you can choose a year, coroner area, category, type of organisation, the organisation it was sent to, and response status. The number beside each choice is how many reports it would show with the other filters you have set, words included; a choice that would show none reads (0) and can’t be picked. Below the list, See these reports by year shows them in a chart. Beside it are the most common categories and the organisations most often sent reports. That list says nothing about how an organisation responded.

Under Download or cite this list, below the reports, you can download the filtered list as a spreadsheet (CSV), or as citations for a reference manager. Downloads hold details only, never a report’s text. To get every report rather than a list, see Download the whole collection below.

Download the whole collection

The open data page offers every report we hold as files you can use for free: reports, who each was sent to, and the responses published on judiciary.uk, as three spreadsheets (CSV), a zip of them and a datapackage.json for data tools. The files are rebuilt every day, and the page gives the edition date, what each column means, the licence and a line to cite. They hold details only, never a report’s text or the names of people who died, and each row links to judiciary.uk.

Download a case bundle

On a coroner’s report, Download case bundle puts everything for that report in one file, to print, save as a PDF or open in Word. It comes with the Journalist, Organisation and Enterprise plans. On Free and Pro the button opens a note pointing to the plans. A bundle doesn’t count towards any allowance.

It holds, in order: a cover sheet (the reference, the coroner’s area, the dates, who the report was sent to and each recipient’s status in the words above, with the date of the figures), the report, each response judiciary.uk has published with a link to it, and a citation for every item. Choose OSCOLA (the default), Harvard or Vancouver, and PDF or Word.

On the Journalist, Organisation and Enterprise plans, the bundle also lists the board papers our team has checked and linked to the report, with the page and a short extract from each. A link says only that the report is mentioned there. Where we haven’t linked any, the cover sheet says “We haven’t linked board papers to this report yet.” That is about our linking only. It says nothing about what any board did.

Using the reports

Coroners’ reports and responses are published under the Open Government Licence. They contain public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Source: Courts and Tribunals Judiciary, judiciary.uk. Names are kept as published.